“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
John 3:16
We all played the game hide and seek as a kid. But there was that one uncomfortable moment when you realized you hid too well. No one had found you. Were they still looking? Sooner or later, you have to go searching for THEM.
Nic was that way. A lifetime of religious work to find God. To make God happy. To sense God in his life. To see God in his people. Nic, better known as Nicodemus, was a Pharisee. The special forces of religion. The Jewish Navy Seals. And he was good at it, a master of the law, a teacher of the Torah, a corrector of all wrongs. Yet, he was still scratching his head on if he’d done enough to be considered good in the eyes of God. Moralism or behaviorism always leaves you guessing. But then Jesus comes around and starts talking about God as Father. God as Shepherd. God as one who goes looking for us. Could it be while Nic had been looking for God, God had been looking for Nic even more?
In what must have been one of several encounters with this inquisitive Pharisee, John gets to hear Jesus speak to the heart of a religious rule keeper. Nic has to come to him at night, so no one sees him (yes, this is the first Nic at Night). And in this midnight encounter, John witnesses Jesus bringing the good news to an exhausted seeker.
John listens to this and wonders if God has also been looking for him.
It reminds me of an elderly Virginia woman who was missing for over a week. Her family had been searching for her for days, trying to find her. What made matters worse was that 69-year-old Aletha Gee Walton was in the early stages of dementia.
Thankfully she was found.
After days of wandering through a nearby wooded area near her house, she gave up. She sat down on a tree stump and began to sing. Eventually, her family heard her small voice through the woods and tracked her down. When they found her, she was singing Amazing Grace.
“Amazing Grace. God was with her the whole time. We just broke down and cried, all of us. We didn’t know what to think,” her family stated. “We thought somebody had kidnapped her or whatever. We didn’t know what had happened.”
“Thank Jesus. It was a big blessing, it really was,” explained friend Rita Allen.
John had to have wondered about his journey—the years of synagogue and memorizing the Torah, the constant feeling of being less than… especially in the presence of such titans of the faith as the Pharisees. And now, Nicodemus the Pharisee finally sat down, and like Aletha, he found Amazing Grace.
When Jesus speaks to Nicodemus and says “whoever” believes… he means “whoever”. Anyone. The spiritually bankrupt and the moral elite. Those lost in the woods and those lost at home. John sees that Jesus teaches Nicodemus that God’s love is for everyone. Even those who are far from him and those who think they are close to him.
Today’s Prayer:
Father, thank you for looking for me and welcoming me home.